The Riverdale home was in reality little more than a hospital that spring. Jean had scarcely recovered her physical strength when she was attacked by measles, and Clara also fell a victim to the infection. Fortunately Mrs. Clemens's health had somewhat improved.
It was during this period that Clemens formulated his eclectic therapeutic doctrine. Writing to Twichell April 4, 1903, he said:
Livy does make a little progress these past 3 or 4 days, progress
which is visible to even the untrained eye. The physicians are
doing good work for her, but my notion is, that no art of healing is
the best for all ills. I should distribute the ailments around:
surgery cases to the surgeon; lupus to the actinic-ray specialist;
nervous prostration to the Christian Scientist; most ills to the
allopath & the homeopath; & (in my own particular case) rheumatism,
gout, & bronchial attack to the osteopathist.
He had plenty of time to think and to read during those weeks of confinement, and to rage, and to write when he felt the need of that expression, though he appears to have completed not much for print beyond his reply to Mrs. Eddy, already mentioned, and his burlesque, “Instructions in Art,” with pictures by himself, published in the Metropolitan for April and May.
Howells called his attention to some military outrages in the Philippines, citing a case where a certain lieutenant had tortured one of his men, a mild offender, to death out of pure deviltry, and had been tried but not punished for his fiendish crime.—[The torture to death of Private Edward C. Richter, an American soldier, by orders of a commissioned officer of the United States army on the night of February 7, 1902. Private Richter was bound and gagged and the gag held in his mouth by means of a club while ice-water was slowly poured into his face, a dipper full at a time, for two hours and a half, until life became extinct.]
Clemens undertook to give expression to his feelings on this subject, but he boiled so when he touched pen to paper to write of it that it was simply impossible for him to say anything within the bounds of print. Then his only relief was to rise and walk the floor, and curse out his fury at the race that had produced such a specimen.
Mrs. Clemens, who perhaps got some drift or the echo of these tempests, now and then sent him a little admonitory, affectionate note.
Among the books that Clemens read, or tried to read, during his confinement were certain of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. He had never been able to admire Scott, and determined now to try to understand this author's popularity and his standing with the critics; but after wading through the first volume of one novel, and beginning another one, he concluded to apply to one who could speak as having authority. He wrote to Brander Matthews:
DEAR BRANDER,—I haven't been out of my bed for 4 weeks, but-well, I
have been reading a good deal, & it occurs to me to ask you to sit
down, some time or other when you have 8 or 9 months to spare, & jot
me down a certain few literary particulars for my help & elevation.
Your time need not be thrown away, for at your further leisure you
can make Columbian lectures out of the results & do your students a
good turn.
1. Are there in Sir Walter's novels passages done in good English
—English which is neither slovenly nor involved?
2. Are there passages whose English is not poor & thin &
commonplace, but is of a quality above that?
3. Are there passages which burn with real fire—not punk, fox-
fire, make-believe?
4. Has he heroes & heroines who are not cads and cadesses?
5. Has he personages whose acts & talk correspond with their
characters as described by him?
6. Has he heroes & heroines whom the reader admires—admires and
knows why?
7. Has he funny characters that are funny, and humorous passages
that are humorous?
8. Does he ever chain the reader's interest & make him reluctant to
lay the book down?
9. Are there pages where he ceases from posing, ceases from
admiring the placid flood & flow of his own dilution, ceases from
being artificial, & is for a time, long or short, recognizably
sincere & in earnest?
10. Did he know how to write English, & didn't do it because he
didn't want to?
11. Did he use the right word only when he couldn't think of
another one, or did he run so much to wrong words because he didn't
know the right one when he saw it?
12. Can you read him and keep your respect for him? Of course a
person could in his day—an era of sentimentality & sloppy
romantics—but land! can a body do it to-day?
Brander, I lie here dying; slowly dying, under the blight of Sir
Walter. I have read the first volume of Rob Roy, & as far as
Chapter XIX of Guy Mannering, & I can no longer hold my head up or
take my nourishment. Lord, it's all so juvenile! so artificial, so
shoddy; & such wax figures & skeletons & specters. Interest? Why,
it is impossible to feel an interest in these bloodless shams, these
milk-&-water humbugs. And oh, the poverty of invention! Not
poverty in inventing situations, but poverty in furnishing reasons
for them. Sir Walter usually gives himself away when he arranges
for a situation—elaborates & elaborates & elaborates till, if you
live to get to it, you don't believe in it when it happens.
I can't find the rest of Rob Roy, I, can't stand any more Mannering
—I do not know just what to do, but I will reflect, & not quit this
great study rashly....
My, I wish I could see you & Leigh Hunt!
Sincerely yours,
S. L. CLEMENS.
But a few days later he experienced a revelation. It came when he perseveringly attacked still a third work of Scott—Quentin Durward. Hastily he wrote to Matthews again: